to your family. Upon you we look for help in the future. Be
thrifty, be saving, do not get sick, and remember that, upon your work
now, will depend your success in life."

"Good-bye!" cried Nurse Saveria. "When you come back I will have for you
the biggest basket of fruit we can pick in the garden of your uncle the
canon."

"That you shall, boy," said Uncle Lucien, slipping his last piece of
pocket-money into Napoleon's hand. "And take you this, for luck. You
will do your best, I know you will, and you'll come back to us a great
man. Don't forget your Uncle Lucien, you boy, when you are famous, will
you?"

Napoleon smiled through his tears, and made a laughing promise in reply
to his uncle's laughing demand. But, for all the fun of the remark,
there was yet a strong groundwork of belief beneath this assertion of
the Canon Lucien Bonaparte; the old man was a shrewd observer. His
friendship for the little Napoleon was strong. And in spite of all
the boy's faults,--his temper, his ambition, his sullenness, his
carelessness, and his selfishness,--Uncle Lucien still recognized in
this nine-year-old nephew an ability that would carry him forward as he
grew older.

"Napoleon has his faults," he said, in talking over family matters
with Mamma Letitia and Papa Charles the night before the departure for
France; "the boy is not perfect--what child is? But those very faults
will grow into action as he becomes acquainted with the world. I expect
great things of the boy; and mark my words, Letitia and Charles, it is
of no use for you to think on Napoleon's fortune or his future. He will
make them for himself, and you will look to him for assistance, rather
than he to you. Joseph is the eldest son; but, of this I am sure,
Napoleon will be the head of this family. Remember what I say; for,
though I may not live to see it, some of you will--and will profit by
it."

They were all on the dock as the vessel sailed away, bearing Papa
Charles, Uncle Joey Fesch, and the two Bonaparte boys, from Ajaccio to
Florence.

Mamma Letitia was there, tearful, but smiling, with Eliza, and Pauline,
and Baby Lucien; so were Uncle Lucien the canon, and Aunt Manuccia,
who had been their mother's housekeeper, with Nurse Saveria, and Nurse
Ilaria, whom Napoleon called foster-mother, and even little Panoria, to
whom Napoleon cried "Good-by, Giacommeta mia! I'll come back some day."

Then the vessel moved out into the harbor, and sailed away for Italy,